How Winter Outdoor Recreation Aids Economic Development
Aaron Hautala talks winter fat biking and economic growth on the Trail Eaffect podcast The January 5 episode of the Trail Eaffect, a podcast devoted to telling the stories of trails, trail communities, and the leaders who make it happen, featured Strateligent and Cuyuna Adventure Town USA CEO Aaron Hautala. In this bonus episode, Aaron talks about his role advocating for developing winter outdoor recreation as a way of boosting economic development in the Cuyuna region. Aaron knew that for businesses to invest in the region, economic opportunity couldn’t be seasonal, relying on a few months of summer mountain bicycling and mine lake paddling alone. For businesses...
Strateligent CEO appears on Active Towns podcast
Aaron shares how he helped transform the Cuyuna region through outdoor recreation BRAINERD –Strateligent CEO Aaron Hautala recently appeared as a guest on John Simmerman’s Active Towns YouTube podcast. The December 2, 2022, episode, “How to create community and economic vibrancy through bikes,” features an in-depth conversation about Aaron’s role in creating economic development through outdoor recreation in the Cuyuna region. John Simmerman is a health promotion professional who specializes on how the build environment influences human behavior, active living, and active mobility. With more than 4,000 subscribers at the time of this writing, the Active Towns podcast documents established and emerging Active Towns “to inspire the...
What’s “The One Thing” that makes a leader worth following?
Strateligent’s CEO and Creative Director Aaron Hautala recently presented during the local lunch segment of Leadercast, a nationally broadcast leadership seminar hosted locally by Sourcewell at Timbers Event Center in Staples, Minnesota. Approximately 70 local and regional leaders in education, non-profit, manufacturing, and healthcare, attended. This year’s Leadercast invited ten of the world’s most influential leaders to give a talk on “The One Thing” that makes a leader worth following. Each host site also invited a respected community leader in the community to share their perspectives to local attendees. For Hautala, that one thing is building relationships. “Good leadership starts with building relationships—and those relationships make the...
Collaboration is a three-legged stool.
In our work, collaboration is one of our Strateligent values and we collaborate daily within our team. However, before we ever begin a client project, there is an even more crucial collaboration—when Aaron Hautala, Strateligent’s president and creative director, meets with a client and their stakeholders in a project’s initial planning phase. Purpose. The first leg of the three-legged collaboration stool occurs when Aaron brings the various stakeholders together to determine the purpose of the project and to discern their goals. Whether it’s consulting with a new client or an existing client with a new project, the people involved come from different backgrounds and viewpoints or they...
Storytelling: Meaningful. Purposeful. Grounded.
Our first step in working with a new client is developing their communication plan. The plan is created through a focused process we employ in getting to know them, their business, and their customers. Ultimately, the plan presents the cohesive strategy we’ve developed with them to help them reach their goals. Every narrative we create for a client is anchored in the bedrock of their individual communication plan and is centered around their goals, opportunities, and strengths. Meaningful After we present the communication plan to the client and they agree with and approve the goals and steps needed to achieve them, our creative director provides direction to...
Does Traditional Advertising Still Work? Yes. (If you do it right.)
We’ve shared a lot about digital advertising lately. It’s because we like the flexibility, the effectiveness, and the ability to see results through data. But there’s a place for traditional advertising methods—print, radio, and outdoor—too. Traditional advertising is often part of the communication plans we create for our clients, serving in conjunction with digital as part of an overall strategy to help our clients increase their bottom line. In general, traditional methods are great tools for brand and relationship-building and improving awareness. If you’re a local business with customers who live within a radio listenership, newspaper circulation, or billboard drive, it is much more effective. We’ve...
Building A Brand To Build A Better Future
Working with RIPL to prevent school violence, together. Our mission is to improve the future for our clients, our communities, and ourselves—and what better way to make good on our mission than helping RIPL (Relational, Impactful, Preventive, Leadership) Training—a school violence prevention program—transform their image, positioning, and sales process. National School Safety Consulting, LLC’s RIPL Training focuses on a “Recognize and Prevent” approach that produces a safe, inclusive, and positive culture that prevents school violence and suicide. It’s different. It needed to look and feel different, too. RIPL came to us for help rebuilding their entire brand—updating everything from their website to their employee email signatures. We refreshed...
How we relate.
Communicating with a purpose hinges on listening, adapting, and achieving. But the secret to our success? We aim to build genuine, long-term relationships with each and every client we serve. We get to truly know them, their businesses, and their customers—and we work together every step of the way. Lake Mille Lacs—a renowned walleye fishing destination—started experiencing an economic downturn when changes in walleye fishing regulations reduced the number of visiting anglers. We were tasked to develop new positioning and showcase new tourism opportunities to complement the already strong fishing base—but first we needed to get to know Lake Mille Lacs. Our team was baptized in Lake...
How we achieve.
When we adapt, we must do so to achieve results. We don’t promote change for the sake of change. We make a change to get results. It’s not always easy, but it is always worth it. Over the years, our work (including a strategic and well-executed communication plan) helped Brainerd Lakes Regional Airport (BRD) reach record ticket sales. But when COVID-19 arrived in the community, we were charged with shifting the messaging to focus on the airport’s safety precautions and overall community value rather than increasing sales. While flights weren’t grounded, stay-at-home orders ultimately affected travel—but not for long. Despite the challenge of a pandemic, once...
How we adapt.
Listening is key to developing a successful communication plan. But things don’t always go as planned. Who hasn’t run into unexpected budget constraints, staffing issues, or world-wide pandemics? We’re experts in helping our clients pivot (being adaptable is one of our values). Sometimes that means making a small tweak to improve results. Sometimes it’s venturing down new avenues and trying new tactics in digital advertising, geo-fencing, or social media marketing. Sometimes it’s walking into a seemingly impossible situation and reworking an existing communication plan entirely. We’ve done it all and we’ve done it successfully. As COVID-19 began to affect tourism in the McGregor, Minnesota area, we stepped...
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